GOING FREELANCE IN THE NEW NORMAL

Being our own boss is something that a lot of people aspire to, and the current situation with Covid-19 is putting that aspiration into a new perspective.

Working from home.

Over the past few weeks, because of the unprecedented challenge of coronavirus and strict guidelines on social distancing, most of us who can have been working from home, a work option that is safer for all of us and our families. Working from home has been, for many companies and their employees, a new way of working. It’s also made many people think that, once the virus has been defeated, maybe they could go on working from home – or to work for themselves. Remote working was already becoming the new way to work, even before Covid-19 forced homeworking to the top of the corporate agenda.

Figures from Eurostat, reported in the European Business Magazine last year, suggest that some 10% of employed people in the EU were usually working from home. Before the UK’s departure from the EU earlier this year, that equated to some 25 million people. The magazine concluded, long before coronavirus reared its ugly head, that “the trend of remote working is one that will dramatically shape European society over the next decade.” For employees, it’s not hard to see the attraction. In the UK, for example, the average daily commute takes some 58.4 minutes.

The commute to work Vs working remotely.

In 2007, the figure was 53.6 minutes, so commutes are becoming slower and longer. London has the longest journey time at one hour and 21 minutes. The same is true across Europe, with new technology giving more of us the capability to work from home without diminishing productivity or quality of output. But, leaving aside remote working, those new technologies are also fuelling a rise in freelance working. After all, why work from home for someone else, tied to set hours and a set wage structure, when you could set yourself free from all the corporate hassle? There are now well over 2 million freelancers in the UK, with some 20% of those in the creative industries – everything from design to creative writing.